


All Saint's Day

by TerraTenshi



Series: Trick or Treat - Halloween 2015 [18]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 08:31:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5121728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerraTenshi/pseuds/TerraTenshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason/Tim treat for the prompt "someone pays a visit to a resting place of the dead."</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Saint's Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Supernova95](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supernova95/gifts).



Tim gently brushed the dry crackling leaves from the headstone. The grass around the flat rectangle was already brown and dead from the cold, attempting to prickle Tim’s legs through his jeans as he sat beside the monument. Once the stone was clear of debris he turned to the headstone on the other side and repeated the process. His fingertip caught in the last digit of the recessed death date and he hesitated. He ran his finger over the date lightly, just a little over four years ago. He finished brushing away the leaves and dirt before turning back to the first stone and touching the death date there as well. Two years. Almost to the day.

Tim pulled his hands back into the sleeves of his hoodie and wrapped his arms around his legs. He didn’t know why he was here except that last night had been so crazy Bruce had actually given them today off.

Sort of.

In his Bruce-y way.

Halloween was always rough on Gotham. Too many psychos. Too many innocent bystanders. Too much chaos. They’d been out until almost six this morning making sure everything they could do was done to make sure Gotham survived another year.

Well, most of them had. Damian had fallen asleep tucked up against a gargoyle around four and Dick had to run him to the nearest safe house on his way to yet another Scarecrow attack.

Realistically Tim should have been sleeping, the way most of his family was, but he felt too wired. He considered the possibility that something he’d been exposed to during the long night was having a stimulant effect on him.

Outside the fence the city was warming up for the day. People coming and going, cleaning up from the more innocent of last night's pranks, chugging coffee to supplement their lack of sleep. Where Tim sat he could only just barely hear the sounds of people and traffic. The graveyard was peaceful. 

The graveyard was still.

He’d meant to come before. On his parent’s birthdays, on the anniversary of his mother’s death. He always ended up getting drowned in work and forgetting though. Or maybe he was doing it on purpose, wanting to forget so he had an excuse not to come. He knew that Bruce had a service that left flowers on their graves on the important dates. Probably they handled Bruce’s parents graves and Dick’s as well. 

It probably made him a horrible son but sometimes it felt better to let Bruce handle it. His parents and he had never really been close in life and it felt like lying to play the dutiful son now.

Not that he hadn’t loved his parents. He did. He’d almost killed Boomerang over his father’s death.

Still...

He could barely remember his mother’s voice. Couldn’t remember the last time he and Jack had done something together. He felt guilty about it. Less for his parents sake than because Bruce and Dick both missed their families so much. Had been scarred by their loss in such vivid and horrifying ways.

Tim wasn’t scarred. It was more like his parents had left a small hollow place inside him. A hollow place he only really noticed when he thought about it. Or when someone else brought up parents and he felt the hollowness, the absence, of it.

He wondered if Jason ever felt like this. About the father who had been in and out of prison until he’d been murdered by Two Face. The step-mother who’d done some less than savory things to feed her drug habit until she eventually overdosed. Or the biological mother who’d sold him out to the Joker. At times he almost wanted to ask but Jason had never talked about his family, didn’t seem interested. Tim didn’t want to push.

Dealing with his own issues, or whatever he was doing - sitting in a graveyard first thing in the morning with too little sleep and possibly high off of... something, seemed safer. Better. Less likely to break this fragile thing he and Jason had.

Or were building. Maybe.

Well, he was hopeful anyway.

And so he sat. Staring vaguely off into the distance. Eyes unfocusing as he pondered the imponderables...

Until his cell phone chirped in his pocket, rousing him enough to shake off the fugue he’d fallen into.

Before he could decide if he wanted to see what the message was, let alone pull the device from his pocket, large warm arms wrapped around him. Instinctively he went for a nerve strike, interrupted as he was dumped like a sack of potatoes over a broad shoulder.

“Gotcha!” Jason slapped Tim’s ass lightly in greeting.

Tim squirmed, tempted to kick the older man on principle. “Asshole! Put me down!”

“Nope.” Jason turned, swinging Tim enough to give him a mild case of vertigo. “You’re going home and to bed.”

Tim thumped his fist against one of the bruises he knew must be forming on Jason’s back. Which earned him a hiss and a harder spank from the man carrying him. “How’d you even find me?”

“Cell phone, but I was already on the right track. Figured you’d be mourning over where my grave was..”

Tim grumbled. “What am I, some gothic heroine? Besides it’s still there.”

“What is?”

“Your grave.” Tim rolled his eyes. Even knowing that Jason couldn’t see it, it made him feel better. In a petulant sort of way.

“Seriously? That’s creepy.”

“Why’d you think it was gone? It’s not like anyone but us knows you’re still alive.”

“Cause it’s creepy. And morbid. Which makes sense since that’s become B’s MO lately.”

Tim tried to knee Jason in the chest half-heartedly. “Fuck you. He’s doing a lot better.”

Jason laughed, palming and then squeezing Tim’s backside. “Keep telling yourself that, baby bird.”

“Fucker.”

“Yeah, yeah, I love you too. Sleep now.”

Which was how Tim ended up passed out in a crappy apartment being used as Jason Todd’s teddy bear.


End file.
